


Just a Poor Boy

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (Song)
Genre: Gen, Mother/Son Issues, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: A murder, a mother, and what matters in the end.





	Just a Poor Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bo Rhap and I make no money from this.

He could still smell the gunpowder, and it probably shouldn’t have registered in his mind as merely distracting.

He should be running, he should be making a break for it and letting the wind slink through his hair as he runs as fast as his legs can carry him. But he can’t make himself move. All he can think is that he didn’t know gunpowder smelled just like that.

That’s when the door opens and a group of men walk in. Maybe he didn’t have a chance, but he still curses inwardly as he throws the gun to the ground. He should have run – but he would have had to start running the second that he had been born. After all, the deck had always been stacked against him.

He was led away to a jail cell where he could smell the iron of the bars. He ran his fingers over it and found, to his surprise, that he liked the texture he felt as he ran the pads of his fingers over the iron grooves.

It was like him, somehow – worn out, tired, there too long but not broken, not yet. He would still be standing when the night was over; he had to be sure of that.

***

He couldn’t stop the feeling that he was stuck in a dream, and that in that dreamlike way he was trapped somewhere, underneath a truck maybe, traffic barreling towards him as he was caught on the highway.

There were no sounds of the highway in this dismal cell, however, no sounds at all really. Only the hum of a motor somewhere in the building – maybe it was a heater, even though it was freezing in here. He was sure that if he bent his bones the wrong way, they wouldn’t sustain the weight of this place. 

He could hear his own thoughts echoing, as if there were other people in the room. He reached out and grabbed on to the bars, at the door this time. Maybe it was a long shot, but perhaps he could get the door open. What then, though? Where would he go? Everyone knew what he had done and anyone who saw him would be sure to turn him in. 

“Help me!” he called out, and no one responded other than his own voice bellowing back at him. There was no one to answer him, but maybe that meant the guards had also all gone home. 

It didn’t matter, he told himself, none of it mattered. After all, he had betrayed himself when he had pulled the trigger, when he had taken another life. How could he ever come back from that?

He leaned his back up against the door, and to his surprise he felt the door shift. 

He had to have imagined it; it couldn’t be this easy, to be free, to walk away. 

Could he truly walk away from all this? Where would he go?

He felt so young, a million years at once.

He pushed the door forward, eyes going wide as he watched it slide open. But if he went out, where exactly could he go? He could hear a crackle outside that he couldn’t quite place for a long moment – then it hit him. Thunder. He was trying to escape into the middle of a lightning storm. 

A flash went through his mind; he had been younger once, a child huddled behind the window staring out at the tiny sparks in the sky, feeling his hair stand up on end and wondering if it was coming for him next. Back then, his mother had been able to comfort him. She’d offered him earmuffs to keep out the sound, or headphones to send in beautiful music to distract him.

She was gone now – probably back at home, laying in bed and wondering how her only son had managed to become this. Or maybe she had already allowed herself to forget him – maybe that was best, for her to start completely anew and erase him from her mind.

Maybe he could find her and tell her how sorry he was. And then he would leave forever. 

He didn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts now. 

***

Walking down the road took longer than he would have thought. It wasn’t a greater distance than he’d walked before – he’d gone from school to home every day for years, turning it off and not even really thinking about it – but now there was a hole in his shoe and something seemed to have twisted it his foot, and it made every step agony.

But he’d told her that if he didn’t come home by sundown, she should leave. He had to find out whether she had heeded his words.

He didn’t know what he hoped or feared to find in his home. 

The road seemed covered in broken glass, littered with dust and dirt and sand. Was he wearing his shoes? It was hard to tell as the wind whipped sand into his face. The soles of his shoes were always fading away, anyhow, always melting into the ground.

He could remember asking for new shoes, mentioning that they could ask his uncle for the money.

His mother had always said no, always said that she would throw his money back in his face.

“We do not beg.” She’d gripped his face, then, squeezed his cheeks so tight he thought they might bruise.

His uncle had offered to help him whenever he had needed…

Maybe he should have sent him a letter instead of this foolish escape. He had pulled in this town; he knew royalty, even. And he cared for the quiet, poor boy.

But his mother… He needed to get back to his mother.

***

He arrived at the cottage, overgrown with ivy and looking as if half of it had been burnt to the ground; no, he knew, that was just the rot in the frame. 

“Mama? Are you home?” he asked. He could feel his bones vibrating, shaking as if he’d stepped on the fault line of an Earthquake.

Maybe they had killed her. Maybe his one moment of weakness had ended her life forever. 

The man he had killed… he had been important. He’d been a guard, his suit had been dark blue.

He saw a foot appear first, in a thick dark brown boot.

“Son? Are you home?”

The voice was wavering, uneasy. All the exhaustion went away as he ran forward and wrapped his arms around his mother’s waist.

“You’re alive!”

She hummed against his neck.

“I am… but Mama… I can’t stay. I have to get out of here.”

She pulled back.

“Get out of here? What are you talking about, son?”

“I need to leave. If they catch me… I don’t know what they’ll do to me. I really… I did something I can’t fix this time.” He cast his eyes downward and swallowed a sigh, not knowing how to explain his actions. They felt as if they had been done by someone else and he had simply been watching, not holding the rifle high and hearing the ear-splitting crack, not seeing and smelling the blood.

“You can’t leave! You’d ruin us if you run away like a coward… you need to prove your innocence.” She was gripping the edges of his shirt, almost frantic now. “You can’t run away… not from this… not from me.”

He turned his head to the side for her was sure he could hear hoofbeats in the distance. If that was them, they were coming for him, and his window of opportunity was being crushed in a stranglehold. His heart beat harder and faster.

“I need you stay here. I need you to face them.”

He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t do it, that the mere thought made his chest feel as if ice had been poured into it by his throat, as if something had taken hold of him and pressed weight upon his chest without mercy.

“I can’t do it, Mama. They won’t let me go, not ever.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Then I’ll let you go. You’re no son of mine.”

***

He didn’t really notice the sand and dirt on the walk back to the prison. His mother had given him a shotgun to holster at his side, and she hadn’t said goodbye as he’d walked out the door.

He could see shadows but no people behind them, sure he could hear voices but perhaps it was just the chill of silence creeping around him.

He had no one.

He’d had someone once… 

The road was so quiet, whispering as he walked.

***

_“We can be so much more. We don’t have to be poor anymore.”_

_“What are you talking about? This life is perfect. I could do this for the rest of my life.”_

_“Oh, and let your mother run the rest of your life? Eat away at you like she’s done with your whole life so far?”_

_He wasn’t sure what came over him, not exactly, but his gun had flown out from his hand and pressed firmly against the other man’s temple._

_And he had known him for so long._

_The gun’s crack had been earsplitting, and he’d fallen to the ground as if someone else, some other force had shot his best friend. It couldn’t have been him._

_Maybe it had been her._

***

“You’re a brave man to decide to come back here.” The judge said his name with a sneer. “You know what the penalty for murder is in this land, don’t you?”

“Yes. It’s death.” He spoke more loudly than he thought possible – the words reverberated through the air. 

He wondered if anyone would miss him.

He wondered if anyone would cry, or whether they would just step all over him. Whether they would… whether they would remember him.

Perhaps it would have been better to never come into the world in the first place, if he was going to leave in this kind of disgraced. He wanted to cry, wanted to run, wanted to forget it all because it didn’t matter at all.

He was angry, but he didn’t know what to say, or what to do. He could try to run, try to get out, but he knew they would never let him get away – not for good. Not for him.

He could still hear the crack of the gun. Maybe this was all what was meant to be.

“And you’re ready?”

They’d loved him, or maybe they never had. They weren’t with him now.

But in that last split second, that wasn’t what he thought about. He wasn’t angry or bitter or sad or remorseful.

He was focused on the singular sound of a breeze touching his ear, the soft whispering of the wind.


End file.
